Electronic Arts

Taking a cue from the designs of Pacific Rim, The Art of Titanfall shows the titans as less than beautiful pieces of hardware that feel like lumbering hulks meant to take a beating as well as delivering them. With only three basic units, there is a great balance in diversity and design of each titan. During the fast paced battles of the Titanfall game, it’s incredibly challenging to try and notice these details but the art book allows you to really appreciate it from the pulled back perspective.

The Art of Titanfall does an awesome exploration of the maps as well. Though not giving a full breakdown as if it was a strategy guide, The Art of Titanfall allows a player to again appreciate the care put into each map that they’d never get to during the heat of battle.

As we all know, things at E3 can be a tad hectic and unfortunately since the Flickcast isn’t a massive team of contributors, sometimes things do slip through the cracks but if it is important enough, we’ll make sure to circle back and cover it. And one of those trailers we are happy to revisit is Titanfall. In addition to the fantastic trailer below there are a ton of reasons to actually care about Titanfall.

The first is the game’s pedigree. Titanfall is the first game from Respawn Entertainment. And while most people would hesitate to jump to a studio’s first game, others remember that Respawn Entertainment was founded from those who left Infinity Ward, the studio behind Call of Duty:Modern Warfare, after disagreements with Activision.

That means that this multiplayer only shooter is being created by the team that perfected modern online FPS gameplay. While the Call of Duty games always tried to push for a single player story, it was the online multiplayer that kept the games amongst the top played games online at all times. Even though there will be some single player style elements such as NPCs, the goal is still multiplayer.

Battlefield 4 being announced was only a matter of time. Billed by EA as the franchise that will take down Call of Duty, Battlefield 3 was an intense and awesome multiplayer experience, though it suffered from a lackluster single player campaign. In both a technical sense and as it was regarded by the most hardcore of shooter fans, the multiplayer of Battlefield 3 was the superior game compared to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.

On EA’s Origin service on Tuesday, an advertisement popped up urging players to Preorder Medal of Honor: Warfighter. The incentive, access to Battlefield 4. This is the first time that EA has officially and publicly talked about Battlefield 4. Though everyone knew it would be coming, no one knew when.

“Though Battlefield and Medal of Honor Warfighter each offer players a completely unique experience, they are united by their underlying technology base – Frostbite. These are two of the hottest shooters, coming together to deliver a one-two punch of action, intensity and shooter entertainment,” said Frank Gibeau, President of EA Labels

The Beta access will take place during the fall of 2013, which may determine whether or not the game is going to be current or next-gen as well depending on the timing, though EA is tight-lipped about those details.

Medal of Honor: Warfighter is set for an October 23, 2012 on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC. Battlefield 4 has no set release date or official announcements for what systems it will be on. Stick to The Flickcast for more info as it becomes available.

To say when gamers find something they really care about, they take it to extremes can sadly sometimes be an understatement. Back in 2007, Mass Effect was released for the XBox 360 and PC to much critical acclaim and commercial success. The game’s follow up, Mass Effect2, would release in January 2010 for the XBox 360 and PC and almost a full year later on the PlayStation 3. The final part of the Commander Shepard trilogy was released on March 6th of this year with, as you guessed it, Mass Effect 3.

One of the biggest draws for Mass Effect was the promise of an epic storyline that not only spanned three full games, but contained choices that would affect the rest of the player’s story throughout the remainder of the story. Destroy a race in Mass Effect and they would not appear in Mass Effect 2. Let a character die in Mass Effect 2 and don’t expect to see them in Mass Effect 3.

So in a series all about choice, many players were floored to learn that upon completion of Mass Effect 3 and whichever choices they ultimately made, the game presented them with one of six different endings. The “perfect” ending would feature an additional five seconds of footage. The six “different” endings however were merely palette swaps. No matter what choices were made through the entire story or even in the ultimate decision of the player, they just received a different color explosion, particle effect and small changes in animation, but essentially the same ending.

Every one with their fingers on the pulse of the gaming community knows today is Mass Effect 3‘s release date. Midnight launches around the nation were held, and right now most gamers are either playing or day dreaming about playing the epic final chapter of Commander Shepard.

What might be a little less known is that an iOS companion game for the hit to be has released on the app store today. Normally ‘little brother’ mobile games don’t make to much of an impact on our rader, but this release has two major things going for it. One it is Mass Effect, and two it was developed by Iron Monkey Studios, the folks behind the fantastic Dead Space iOS game.

EA is promising a console like experience for this game, and with Iron Monkey involved we are inclined to give this a shot. The game looks to be a concurrent adventure to the main title:

As Commander Shepard battles Reapers across the galaxy, veteran Cerberus agent Randall Ezno procures aliens for illicit experiments at a secret facility. But when the Director of the facility goes too far – Randall fights back and vows to bring Cerberus down!

Can you fight your way off the hostile Cerberus base and deliver their secret research to the Alliance?

Not long ago, the gaming world was given the epic fantasy adventure of the Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. The game featured over 250 hours of gameplay for those looking to explore every dungeon and complete every quest. It was a task that many, though knowing they could never fulfill to its entirety, flocked to.

Just a few months later, gamers were told about a new fantasy adventure, different both in visual tone and gameplay mechanics that would rival that scope. In a recent interview when asked about the length of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, developers stated that the fastest speed run of the game by one of the QA testers who had already competed the game previously and knew locations of every major event in the game at just over 200 hours.

Originally started out as an MMO from former Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling’s 38 Studios, Reckoning split off in to its own single player action RPG adventure. With executive game designer Ken Rolston (Elder Scrolls III: Marrowind, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion), artwork from Todd McFarlane (Spawn), an epic 10,000 year world history from R.A. Salvatore (Forgotten Realms) and music from composer (Goldeneye, Viva Pinata), Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning had the most impressive pedigree for a new IP in recent memory and quite possibly the most hype to live up to.

Take a bunch of women in their late forties to mid-fifties and show them graphic images of violence and mutilation from the upcoming Dead Space 2 (which comes out tomorrow, January 25th) and record their reactions ranging from utter terror to complete revulsion. Then make sure to tell people just how violent your game is over some not so violent in game videos. Slap a “M for Mature” tag on it and there you have your ad campaign with the tag line, “Your Mom Hates This.”

Give me a break. There are so many problems with this campaign that is insulting to the gaming community as well as general consumers. Let’s break this down in a logical manner, even though obviously the advertising agency didn’t.

Dead Space 2 is a rated M game, meaning it should only be targeting players over the age of 18. But, the message of “Your mom hates this” is something that marketers would gear towards a younger self righteous and rebellious person in their early teens. By the age of 18, most people have evolved in to at least somewhat freethinking individuals who make decisions based more on personal preference than just trying to do something to tick their mom off.

*** Note – The following Rock Band 3 review does not formally review the Keyboard, the Pro Guitar peripherals or Pro Mode since they were not available to us at the time of the review. This has been reflected in the review score.***

Harmonix began taking the music genre by storm with their work on the initial Guitar Hero. After parting ways from Activision, they took the game to the next level by making drums and vocals the new standard.

They also came up with the idea of the Rock Band franchise as a platform rather than an annualized release like Guitar Hero has taken (Guitar Hero being on their sixth consecutive yearly release with Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock) After two years since Rock Band 2, Harmonix looked to step up their game by adding an additional instrument in the keyboard to the band mix as well as a Pro mode to help players learn how to play guitar, drums and keyboard using music in the game.

They also took concepts from other spinoff titles such as Rock Band: Green Day like vocal harmonies and brought them to the fold as well.

Gameplay:

Not much has changed for Rock Band 3 for the standard band format. Two guitars and a drum set each have a cascading highway of notes down the screen as the vocals scroll across the top.

There is now of course the substitution of a new instrument in the keyboard which can even be used to play the guitar parts of older Rock Band music that hasn’t gotten the keyboard face lift.

Back at Comic-Con, we got the chance to play some hands on with the 2010 reboot of Medal of Honor multiplayer Beta which went live for those who had signed up for it on July 20th. The Beta is exclusive to the PC and PlayStation 3. The multiplayer for Medal of Honor is being developed by EA Digital Illusions CE while the single player campaign is coming to us from Danger Close. The single player campaign will follow a group of Tier One Operators (the top .01% most elite in the US Armed Forces) in the early parts of the war with Afghanistan.

The first thing that stood out to us during the demo was the use of the AMD technology Ifinity which allows players to use a three monitor setup to play the game in super wide screen. The game looks so great that this is definitely the way the game was meant to be experienced. To its credit because this will be the game it is most likely compared to, Medal of Honor is a more visually impressive experience than the latest iteration of the Call of Duty franchise. The levels look more realistic with an insane level of detail in them. The lighting also makes everything pop out to you just a little more as well.

The control of Medal of Honor is top notch. In the first person genre, control is everything and Medal of Honor hits it perfectly. As expected from a veteran franchise that has had time to refine its control and move with the trends without being forced to put out a yearly iteration, Medal of Honor feels like a fresh game when playing it even though most of what is seen in the multiplayer has been done before. After our hands on time with it, it is a game we know we want to spend some more time with in the near future.

It shouldn’t come as any surprise that a game like EA’s Mass Effectwill be coming to the big screen. After all, the game is hugely successful and has spawned a sequel that has taken the gaming world by storm.

And now, according to reports, Legendary Pictures has picked up rights to Mass Effect and will develop it into a potential franchise. I Am Legend and Thor writer Mark Protosevich is currently in negotiations to handle adapting the game for the big screen.

Just in case you don’t play video games or haven’t, for some reason, heard of Mass Effect, the game debuted in 2008 and is a sci-fi action game set in the year 2183, focusing on a human soldier and his starship, the SSV Normandy. It features alien races, combat and technology which spans the galaxy offering a great deal of diverse situations and role play. In short, its a pretty darn fun game and would probably make a great movie.

Seeing as how this film is in the early stages and these kinds of movies tend to take a long time to make it to the screen, especially if you want to do it right, expect to see us bringing you more info on Mass Effect the movie over the next year at least. Until then, go back and play the game again and imagine what could be.